From the About page comes a question about baptism, the essence of which is the observation that the words we now translate “baptize,” “baptism,” “[John the] Baptist,” etc. were actually ordinary words in Greek, like our “wash” in English. They were not technical religious terms like the English “baptize,” and the Greek words did not…
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Give Ear At BBB, Wayne notes the oddity of the English phrase “give ear” for the Hebrew he’ezin. I think it can be useful to look at what went wrong here. The Root of the Problem Hebrew has at least two words for “hear/listen.” The first is shama. We find it, for example, in the…
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I’ve just returned from my summer break, so I’ll be posting regularly again and also catching up on the questions from the About page. I’ll start with Rabbi Morton Kaplan, who asks simply, “What is the correct pronunciation of the tetragrammaton?” I’ve already explained a bit of the background. I have more information in my…
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